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Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Accountability in education

I was shocked
by Lant
Pritchett's note on the appalling performance of India's best
two states on the international PISA assessment. Actually, I was
not really shocked; I didn't expect anything else as I've been
listening to Lant for years now. By the same token, I agree with
Jishnu Das that
we really don't know much about what works in education (other than
that good teaching makes a difference) and that our bean-counting of
inputs into education may be completely wrong headed. From
conversations with him (also over years) I surmise that the only
thing we really know about what leads to more learning is that it is
correlated with how many years children stay in school. What that
suggests, though, is that attention be directed towards the choice
of parents and students to stay in school.

In my opinion people choose to do things if it is worth it to them.
This is a common assumption for economists. While challengeable in
some circumstances, does it make any sense to think that people send
their children to school if they don't think it's worth it? If it is
compulsory: sure. With compulsion, attention of policy makers and
carefully watchful observers such as Pratham should be to make sure
school is worth the year of children's attendance since people would
not be able to decide for themselves. Until we see compulsory
schooling enforced, though, years of education remain a family's
choice and we have to understand how and why people make that
choice.

Unless we think parents are utterly clueless about the value of
education and totally incapable of telling if teachers are doing
anything or their children are learning anything, the effectiveness of
teaching and the amount of knowledge imparted must be a major factor
in their decision as to whether school is worth it. Don't get me
wrong, I've met dozens of educators and education officials in India
who believe parents are, indeed, clueless and such decisions should be
out of their hands. But they are the very people who gave us the PISA
ratings and are indeed throwbacks to the License Raj where only
bureaucrats were assumed to know anything. Further, with the explosion
of private schools, even in rural areas, it is laughable to think that
there are so many parents who value education so little. They are
willing to forego free public education in order to pay for something
more worthwhile.

Which brings us to accountability.

What could parents be looking at, that makes them think school is
worth it? It must be based on performance: parents don't really see
the inputs, they mostly just see their children learn. Or not learn as
is the case. So how can they translate their concern for learning into
actual learning? They have to be free to pick the educational
context that they see is working for them or their
neighbors. That's where accountability comes in.

A provider of any good or service is likely to be most accountable
when their livelihood depends upon attracting customers. If what they
provide is worth it, people will take the service, and the provider
can make a living. If not, parents won't pay and teachers won't get
paid. As of now, there is no mechanism to allow families to make that
choice. There is no such compulsion for teachers to provide a service
worth paying for. No doubt there are many teachers (probably most) who
are doing the best they can regardless of how they are paid. But with
over 24% absenteeism, large numbers of teachers observed to be doing
anything but teaching, and many sub-contracting their position to
under-qualified replacements at a fraction of government salaries,
there is substantial room for improvement.

Further, if we are going to get more students (and, hence,
teachers) into classrooms, the dedicated teachers may be the ones who
are already on the job. People induced to enter the profession may not
be as dedicated and, hence, need some other way to hold them
accountable than internally felt professional ethics.

I am an educator (of sorts) but have no opinion about what the
bottleneck in children's learning really is. Jishnu says the most
successful headmasters all say different things (after good teachers -
but then, don't we judge the goodness of teachers by whether their
students actually learn? It's an output based judgment, too.) I know
little of pedagogical theory. But I know just as little about the
inner workings of most complex things I use -- computers and the
Internet, water systems, bicycles. I can tell when they work and when
they don't, though. Similarly, I know that my sons learned to read and
write, become responsible citizens and to develop and exercise
critical intellectual capacities (sometimes way too critical for my
taste) even though I have no idea how they learned them. I did know
that their teachers were in school almost every day and doing things
that sounded like teaching to me. I did not have to be an expert on
pedagogy to hold the schools completely accountable for my children's
education.

I was also fortunate enough to be able to take (or threaten to
take) them out of government schools if I thought otherwise. Funding
for government schools (in the U.S.) follows enrollment, if not so
directly and obviously as for private schools. So my threats about
shifting my children out of government school directly mattered to
their teachers.

There is no reason why Indian parents can't do the same. They, on
average, may not have my education but after talking to hundreds of
families in rural areas, tribal villages, urban slums and SC hamlets,
I hear no less concern for their children's future than I have for
mine and no less ability to tell if a teacher appears to be doing his
job. They may be more capable than me since they are more likely to
see the teachers themselves -- I needed to ask my children.

In many rich countries, the issue of vouchers to pay for schools is
emotionally charged. Historically, free compulsory public education
was a result of fights between church and State (even in Japan where
`church' doesn't quite fit -- but religion and State does). Children
were already attending school in high percentages and there was a
fight for their hearts and minds. In rich countries currently,
suggestions to provide vouchers instead of State-run schools re-kindle
this old antagonism against religious instruction.

India never had this fight nor this evolution of public
provision. Our view of schooling here in India was imposed based on
the final result of universal free education seen in rich countries
without the history from which that final result evolved.

India needn't go through the phase of fighting over who gets to
teach students who are already highly motivated to learn and have seen
learning take place. If India wants to see all children educated, she
can certainly pay for the cost of education (in fact, the job can be
done for much less per student is presently spent) so that families
don't have to. But the government doesn't have to provide it directly
(though government schools should be free to compete for this money if
it can). The fight is the State against society (families), not
against the church.

What the State can do is make as much information known to parents
as possible. What should children know after how many years of school?
How do you know if your child is keeping up? How do you know what
you're paying for is worth it? As of now, this information is
certainly not given to parents. Maybe State run schools don't want
parents to know (and, unfortunately, most Indian parents will not know
about PISA). And as of now, there is nothing parents (particularly
poor parents) can do about it anyway.

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